Science

Abdus Salam

The highest exam marks ever recorded in Punjab at 14; the first Muslim science Nobel — a word later erased from his gravestone.

Born: 1926 · Jhang, Punjab, British India (now Pakistan)
Roots: Punjabi; Ahmadi Muslim family
Family: Middle class; His father was an education-department official in a farming district; a devout household of modest means.
Education: Government College Lahore → St John's College, Cambridge (scholarship)
Started with: A record exam score; The highest matriculation marks ever recorded at Punjab University, at 14; the town lined the streets to greet him.
Affiliations & societies: Ahmadiyya Muslim CommunityDocumented; His lifelong faith; Pakistan's 1974 constitutional amendment declaring Ahmadis non-Muslim drove him from the country.; Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1940 · age 14
The record score
Wins a scholarship to Government College Lahore on the strength of it.
1946 · age 20
Cambridge
A scholarship assembled in Punjab carries him to St John's; a double first follows.
1951 · age 25
Returns to teach in Lahore
Finds himself the only theoretical physicist in the country; leaves in 1954, calling the choice one between physics and Pakistan.
1964 · age 38
Founds the ICTP
The Trieste centre gives scientists from developing countries what he never had — a way to stay connected without emigrating.
1974 · age 48
Leaves Pakistan in protest
Parliament declares Ahmadis non-Muslim; Salam, a national adviser, departs.
1979 · age 53
Nobel Prize in Physics
For electroweak unification, shared with Weinberg and Glashow; he accepts in traditional dress and quotes the Quran.
1996 · age 70
Buried in Rabwah
A magistrate later orders the word "Muslim" effaced from his gravestone's "First Muslim Nobel Laureate."

Sources

Compiled from these references and contemporaneous press reporting. Figures are approximate; verify before relying on them.